Configuring and Managing Scan Profiles in Netsparker Desktop

Netsparker Desktop Scan Profiles allow you to save all of the pre-scan settings, so you can load them at a later stage and use them for other web application security scans.

Why Should You Use Scan Profiles?

If you scan a number of different websites frequently, and each of which requires a different configuration, you can save the pre-scan settings for each individual website as a Scan Profile. So the next time you need to scan it you can simply load the Scan Profile and launch the scan, rather than having to configure the scanner each time.

Which Settings Are Saved in a Scan Profile?

All the scan settings you can configure from the Start a New Website Scan dialog box (highlighted in the above screenshot) are saved in the Scan Profile. These are:

Target URL

Scan Policy

Custom cookies

Crawling options

Scan Scope

Excluded and Included URLs

List of imported links

URL rewrite rules

Authentication settings

Highlighting the Changes in a Scan Profile:

When you change any of the settings in the Start a New Website Scan dialog, the node in which the changes are made is marked in bold and underlined. This allows you to easily identify where the changes have been made. For example in the below screenshot the General node is highlighted because we enabled the option Pause Scan After Crawling.

This feature is also useful for when you load a Scan Profile; you can quickly see which nodes in the profile have been modified.

How to Create a New Scan Profile in Netsparker Desktop

Once you configure all the settings in Netsparker Desktop you can save these settings as a Scan Profile by clicking the arrow icon next to the Previous Settings button and select Save As New Profile… from the drop down menu.

How to Load a Saved Scan Profile

If you want to use a saved Scan Profile click the arrow icon next to the Previous Settings button and select the profile’s name from the drop down menu. In the screenshot below we are loading the PHPTestsparker Scan Profile.

How to Change the Settings Saved in a Scan Profile

To change the settings in a ScanProfileload the Scan Profile, make the required change and then save the new changes by selecting Save Profile from the drop down menu.

Default Scan Profiles in Netsparker Cloud

The Netsparker Desktop web security scanner has two built-in Scan Profiles, the Default and the Previous Settings.

- The Default Scan Profile has the default configuration.

- The Previous Settings built-in Scan Profile is used by the scanner to save the settings of the Scan Profile used in the previous scan. Therefore even if you used a saved Scan Profile in a previous scan, its settings will be saved in the Previous Setting Scan Profile.

Managing Scan Profiles in Netsparker Desktop

Netsparker Desktop Scan Profiles are saved as XML files in the following location:

%USERPROFILE%\Documents\Netsparker\Profiles

To delete or backup the Scan Profiles you can do so from this location.